Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
Dear Australia Post,
Thank you for increasing your international parcel post zones from 4 to 8. Thank you also for making the only way to get a complete list of which countries are in which zones by going through and checking each country individually via a dropdown menu on your website.
Thank you. Thank you a whole freakin’ bunch.
In a follow up to my last post, I was recently quite disappointed to learn that the lyrics to the Killers’ Mr Brightside are not ‘turning snakes into the sea’, but ‘turning saints into the sea’, which is still a bloody puzzling thing to say, but somehow nowhere near as cool.
This is the second thing I got wrong about the song. When I first heard it I thought it was about seeing someone you have a thing for – but are too timid to attempt a shot at – going home from a bar or party with someone else. It actually turns out to be about suspecting your partner is having an affair.
I find it darkly amusing that my brain – even when simply considering a song – refused to construct a scenario where I have a partner, and instead cast me in the role of the pathetic, forever alone guy watching the girl he wants walking away ;D
As anyone who cares about radio stations aimed at a demographic way younger than them should know, Triple J are doing another one of their special Hottest 100 polls. This time around it’s to find the hottest 100 songs of the last 20 years – a period they claim to have chosen because it’s the 20th anniversary of the first hottest 100, but have clearly actually selected to prevent Love will Tear us Apart or Smells like Teen Spirit from taking out the number one place. Again.
In a spirit of generosity not seen since Adam and Will were on air, they’ve allowed us punters not just 10, but 20 votes each! So, over the last few weeks I’ve spent many hours combing through my music collection and the lists of the previous 20 Hottest 100s to come up with some kind of list summing up the best music the world has produced over the last two decades.
Naturally I failed. So I just sat down today and threw together a collection of songs that seemed more or less acceptable, and which adequately covered the period in question. All are – of course – songs I love, but they aren’t “the best” 20 songs of the last 20 years, because such a list is clearly impossible. They’re just a representative sample.
So, here goes…
1994 – Bug Powder Dust – Bomb the Base
1995 – Girl from Mars – Ash
1995 – Santa Monica – Everclear
1996 – Frank Sinatra – Cake
1997 – The Cure – Wrong Number
1999 – Deeper Water – Deadstar
2000 – All the Small Things – Blink 182
2001 – Zak and Sara – Ben Folds
2002 – That Great Love Sound – The Raveonettes
2003 – Lighthouse – The Waifs
2003 – The Dresden Dolls – Girl Anachronism
2003 – The Mountain Goats – Palmcorder Yajna
2004 – Mr Brightside – The Killers
2006 – Knights of Cydonia – Muse
2007 – Det Snurrar I Min Skalle – Familjen
2007 – Gimme Sympathy – Metric
2008 – Kids – MGMT
2008 – Magic – Ladyhawke
2008 – Now – Mates of State (Only video with the full song I could find!)
2011 – Palaces of Montezuma – Grinderman (Couldn’t find a non-live version, so here’s one from Jools Holland)
I don’t know how many, if any, will get into the countdown, but we’ll see.
By the way, I linked to an alternate mix of Kids because I like it more than the official version. Deal with it! 😀
I’m doing my best to reserve judgement on the Flickr redesign, but now that I’ve had the time for a good look around, and more information on the future of the site is emerging, I’m shifting towards really disliking it.
The entire interface seems to have been shifted towards “look at all the pretty pictures!” while making it a pain in the arse to see any of the meta-information – titles, descriptions, dates, locations, etc – that might have been entered about said pretty pictures.
Now, I don’t use Flickr to show off pretty pictures, I use it to store and annotate photographs of things that I find interesting, and other people might find interesting too. Without the context of the meta-information, a lot of my photos are pointless, so the redesign has made the site a hell of lot less useful for me.
I’m not making any rash decisions yet, but I’ll be watching Flickr very carefully over the next couple of months to see if things improve. If not, I may well cancel my pro account, pull all my stuff down and find somewhere else to keep it.
Flickr Community: Hey Flickr! You used to be cool but now you’re old and tired! You need to change! Flickr Sucks!
Flickr: We heard what you’ve all been saying – Welcome to the new and improved Flickr!
Flickr Community: What!? What is this crap!? Why did they change it!? Change back! I want to opt out! Flickr Sucks!!! SUUUUUCCCCKKKKSSSS!!!!!!!!
Generalised idiocy in the webosphere aside, I’m currently undecided on the new look Flickr. I don’t hate it, but I don’t yet love it. I’m going to give it some time to settle in before jumping on any bandwagons, pro or anti.
Now if I can only select a cover image without having to specifically upload something…
PS: Oh I meant to mention that SAVN are doing some sterling work regarding the Australian Vaccination Network.
HOLY CRAP
That is all.
(Apart from, can anyone say Valeyard?)
Saw Star Trek: Into Darkness last night. I haven’t got time right now to write up my thoughts in full, but I will say that I quite enjoyed it – even if the backstory of the main villain was a bit underused. The constant references to that other movie were also a lot of fun.
The thing that impressed me the most however is that the technology of the 23rd century is not only advanced enough to build faster than light spacecraft, but also – apparently – to rotate St Paul’s Cathedral 180 degrees at will 😉
Came up with a new word last night. “Hilorible”. It means hilarious and horrible at the same time.
For instance, Justin Beiber’s comment about Anne Frank. It’s horrible, but so outrageous that you can’t help laughing – hilorible!
Similarly, just about anything that comes out of the mouth of Alex Jones. Horrible, but hilarious – hilorible!
Use it with pride!
Oh, and while on the subject of Alex Jones and Justin Beiber, who can forget this classic? IT’S PURE EVIL!!
I was messing around on my computer this weekend just gone – probably building an apartment block in Minecraft or something – when Visage’s one and only (as far as I know) hit Fade to Grey came on iTunes…
This reminded me of Kelly Osbourne’s quite blatant rip-off re-imaging of the song from a few years back, One Word, so I fired it up on YouTube…
It’s actually not a bad song, no doubt because it steals references so many elements from the original.
In any case, the video clip reminded me that although I was fully aware of the ground breaking 1965 French Sci-Fi film Alphaville, I actually had no idea what it was about (apart from modernist Paris architecture). So I looked it up on Wikipedia and was surprised to note a number of similarities with Bioshock Infinite – to wit in both stories a man is sent to infiltrate a closed off, technology obsessed city run by a dictator with an obscured past, and becomes involved with his mysterious daughter.
Of course the resolutions of the stories are completely different, but it was just a kind of cool thing to stumble over on a Sunday afternoon.
Oh, and while on the subject of Alphaville, here’s the song you’re probably thinking of…
This is simply the worst thing ever…
